Video of the week: SPIDER finds and fixes holes in hybrid airship

This week’s video comes from Lockheed Martin Skunk Works where hybrid air vehicles are being added to an aviation inventory that includes the SR-71 Blackbird and F-22 Raptor.

Hybrid Airships will give operators virtually unlimited access to isolated locations around the world and provide support to areas with little to no infrastructure.

Attention does, however, have to be given the hybrid airship’s skin, where holes can develop. To mitigate this problem, the aircraft is deflated and then inspected manually.

To streamline this process, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works has patented SPIDER (Self-Propelled Instrument for Damage Evaluation and Repair), in which two robots set about inspecting the outer skin of an inflated airship for holes, repairing them as and when they are found.

That was a brilliant video (played without sound). however the only thing was the small robots looked uncannily like lice running over the skin of a huge beast or those parasitic invertebrates that live on the skin of whales. I suppose in reality there is nothing new under the sun and I guess after there having been a billion years of evolution for nature to have produced something for every task, whatever we produce will have a parallel (apologies if this is similar to the text in any way, running the video on a machine with no sound card)

In the 80s and 80s I did have a link to the so-called Skunk works! As a ‘Brit’ and having NOT signed anything which would preclude describing what that link was…..I still do not intend to do so! Sufficient to say that Uncle Sam and his Engineers have the good sense to use the very best when its available: even if it is not ‘native’. Previous blogs may have given the impression that I have a tendency to disparage too much management. Whilst one can point an accusing finger at some of the limitations of the depth and bredth of some US trained Engineers, one can NEVER fault their enthusiasm and the ability to create multi-disciplinary teams (even if the odd Brit gets into such!) that achieve success. Best wishes to Burbank!

Its fascinating to see recent and present advances in air-ships and the whole ‘lighter-than-air’ technology. As may be known, this aspect of technology was being developed in the late 20s and 30s: it was the US policy of retaining control over ALL the world’s supply of helium (inherently un-flamable) which required European manufacturers (UK, Germany) to have to use hydrogen (highly flamable) with the inevitable results. Highly publicized crashes and conflagarations of such ferocity that development of lighter-than-air systems was stopped for almost 50 years! Nevil Shute (engineer, mathematician and a colleague of my father) worked with Barnes Wallace in this field: his books are well worth a read and available on the www. Mike B

GED so am I!
I did once have a friendly disagreement with some European Engineers: who were part of the team designing the flexible ‘sides’ of large trucks and trailers -so called TIRs? Their view was that as the coating applied to the base fabric was additional material it surely added to the strength of the composite. NOT SO say MJB. Fabrics created from warp and weft filament yarns have much of their strength from the fact that individual yarns are capable of movement when stressed: allowing them to ‘share’ applied loads with their neighbours. Coat the fabrics and you restrict the movement and hence the ultimate strength. Sounds counter-intuitive but actually easily proven. I am not sure if the O2 arena (Millennium Dome!) has holes in it, but the SPIDER would surely be one way to repair such! Give me time to think of other applications?

Is there a similarity between seeking a hole in fabric and repairing it and finding places in a field on a farm where ‘seed’ has not been properly placed: and filling in the ‘gaps? I gather this is an issue for certain types of crops. Presumably the same applies within green-houses? Just a thought.